


Crossed the Ocean for a Heart of Gold

by pukeandcry



Series: Heart of Gold [1]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Fluff, Kidfic, M/M, idek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-16 00:14:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/855604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pukeandcry/pseuds/pukeandcry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Oops,” Rosie repeats happily from beside him, and except for the two front teeth she’s missing, the mischievous smile she flashes at Harry is such a carbon copy of Louis’ that he has to shake his head, looking back and forth between them several times as if to sort out which one is which.</p><p>(Kidfic set in in the southern U.S.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crossed the Ocean for a Heart of Gold

**Author's Note:**

> literally one billion percent lane's fault for letting me shriek at her about harry styles on porches and americana and babies with accents and handsome daddies in love at all hours of the day so like, talk to her, idk
> 
> technically i guess this can be read as either an AU or not? so like, whatever makes you happy.

“No, hold on, it has to be --”

He’s too late, though, because Louis is already dumping a haphazardly-measured cup into the big silver mixing bowl sitting in the center of the counter. Harry loves him, he really, truly does, but Louis has a chronic and maddening paying-attention problem, and it’s only exacerbated when Harry, in what is always an exercise in poor judgement, lets Louis try to help in the kitchen. He thinks -- or at least hopes, and probably futilely -- that Louis will eventually learn to listen to Harry’s expertise, given that _Harry’s_ never caught their kitchen curtains on fire while trying to use the waffle iron, let alone done it _twice_ , but he’s starting to accept that might be one of his few dreams that will never be realized.

“--cold water,” Harry finishes pointlessly, wiping away the glob of flour and water that has splashed up onto his cheek. “Y’have to use _cold_ water in pie crusts.”

“Oh,” Louis says, grinning at him. “Oops.”

“Oops,” Rosie repeats happily from beside him, and except for the two front teeth she’s missing, the mischievous smile she flashes at Harry is such a carbon copy of Louis’ that he has to shake his head, looking back and forth between them several times as if to sort out which one is which. It’s almost eerie how much she’s like Louis, all stubborn will and mad laughter and nearly endless energy, endless curiosity. Louis always maintains that it’s the opposite, that she’s a miniature version of Harry, and yeah, she might have inherited Harry’s inability to tell a joke to completion and habit of constantly fiddling with her hair, but -- but every time he looks at her, Harry sees Louis, through and through. Most of the time, it makes his heart swell up so he thinks it might burst out of his chest.

Other times, though, he gets the distinct impression they’re ganging up on him.

This isn’t the first pie Louis’ ruined, not even the first pie he’s ruined this _month_ , so he’s pretty sure Louis knows it has to be cold water. He’s pretty sure it hadn’t been an innocent mistake.

“You’re a menace,” he says to Louis, and then points at Rosie, pretending to be stern. “Both of you are. Shouldn’t even let you two in my kitchen.”

“Baking’s boring anyway,” Rosie says happily, which is absurd, because she’d been the one who’d asked if they could make a peach pie in the first place. Harry suspects now that it’d been a set up the whole time, a Machiavellian scheme between her and Louis to get pie and terrorize him at the same time.

“You’re five,” Harry says. “You haven’t been alive long enough to be bored.”

“Well I _am_ ,” she says, kicking her legs against the counter from where she’s perched on one of the tall chairs pulled up near it. “I want to go outside now.”

“Fine,” Harry sighs, trying to sound put-upon. “Go on, have your fun while I stay here and slave over a hot stove--”

“Pies don’t bake on a stovetop, Nigella,” Louis says, swooping around to rest his chin on the curve of Harry’s shoulder and press a kiss against his neck. Rosie wrinkles her nose in disgust at them.

“But I have to cook the peaches first,” he pouts, and Louis blows a raspberry just under his ear in response, getting him all slobbery. Harry tries to keep himself from smiling, and mostly fails.

“I want to find a frog,” Rosie announces.

“Do you?” Louis asks, disentangling himself from Harry so he can turn his attention to her. “Where shall we go look for one, then?”

She looks at him witheringly, like it’s the stupidest question she’s ever heard. “The _creek_ ,” she says impatiently. It comes out like _crick_ , and Harry bites his tongue to keep from laughing, because her strange little accent is so delightfully bizarre, his and Louis’ Northern mashed up with a southern drawl, all _y’alls_ and _fixin’ to_. It’s possibly his favorite thing on Earth. “C’mon, Papa, we’re gonna look for one,” she demands of Louis.

“Ask Dad if it’s okay,” Louis instructs. “You’re abandoning him mid-pie.”

Rosie turns to Harry and gazes up at him with her huge brown eyes, and she doesn’t even have to _say_ anything and Harry’s already melting. It’s going to be a problem when she gets older, he thinks, his complete inability to say no to her, but he thinks for now, if he can give her everything she wants -- well, that’s not so bad, necessarily.

“It’s fine,” he says. “I can finish it alone.”

“ _Frogs_!” she shrieks, leaping off her chair, nearly colliding with Harry’s legs as she does.

“Put on your galoshes first,” Louis says, but she’s already sprinting through the open door that leads from the kitchen to the back yard. “Oi, Bug, I mean it, you can’t go in barefoot again,” he calls after her. “If you get another leech, I’m not pulling it off this time!” She’s already gone, though, and she definitely hasn’t paused to put on any shoes.

“You didn’t pull it off last time either,” Harry reminds him as Louis shoves his own bare feet into a pair of battered, dirty trainers that had been left underneath the breakfast table in a heap. Harry’s not even sure who they’d originally belonged to, him or Louis, but they’ve pretty much become shared by this point. “You hid on the porch until I did it for you.”

“I did no such thing,” Louis protests. “I had a _thing_ to attend to suddenly, on the porch, and it just _happened_ to overlap with leech removal. That’s all.”

“Uh huh,” Harry says, dumping the ruined dough out of his mixing bowl and into the garbage so he can start over and do it properly this time. “A _thing_.”

“Yep,” Louis agrees, putting his phone into the pocket of his cut-off shorts and straightening his thin white t-shirt. “Very important. Couldn’t reschedule.”

Harry smiles and shakes his head. “Whatever you say. Go find our daughter before she falls in the creek, yeah?”

“That pie had better be ready when we’re back,” Louis tells him as he heads out the door.

“Sure,” Harry agrees. “Have fun.” He pauses for a moment. “But don’t let her bring back too many frogs this time, okay? Louis? _No more than two_ ,” Harry calls after him, but Louis is already gone, the screen door swinging shut behind him. Harry thinks he’s heard, but suspects they’ll come back with no less than five in the enormous plastic bug-and-critter catcher they’d bought Rosie for her last birthday anyway.

He measures out the flour carefully, thinking about how he’ll inevitably have to talk Rosie down from trying to keep them all as pets in the giant clawfoot bathtub in her bathroom, and how she’ll stick her bottom lip out at him until he relents, and then he’ll have to sneak in after she’s fallen asleep and secret them out to froggy freedom under the cover of darkness. Again.

He adds the cold water to the new batch of dough, and tries not to feel too sickeningly pleased with his life.

-

It had been mostly a whim, moving to the States, and Georgia in particular. More than anything they’d just meant to go on holiday, someplace slow and warm and relaxing where Louis wouldn’t look so exhausted all the time. Harry had rented the first place he could find them, an old cottage with weather-beaten shutters and enormous windows, plopped down in the middle of a copse of weeping willows, miles from the nearest town. It’d been quiet and heavy with humidity when they’d arrived, the walls seeming to breathe with it, and absolutely perfect.They’d meant to stay for a week in May, and had ended up staying the entire summer. It’s just -- it’d been the first time in ages the tired bags under Louis’ eyes had started to fade, when he hadn’t been anxiously checking his mobile every ten minutes and chewing his fingernails down to nubs. He’d slept for a solid eight hour stretch the first night after they’d arrived, the first time Harry can remember that happening in ages. If Harry had started searching real estate websites the second week they’d been there, he hardly thinks anyone can blame him, not if they’d seen how much easier Louis seemed to breathe there.

He’d expected Louis to put up more of a fight, because Georgia is beautiful and peaceful but it’s also four thousand miles from England, but it had actually been surprisingly easy in the end. The listing had pinged in his inbox in August, just before they’d flown back to London, and he’d driven Louis to see it on a Saturday, refusing to tell him where they were going until they were pulling up the long drive. Louis had looked at Harry curiously for a long moment after he’d explained, but remained uncharacteristically quiet and allowed Harry and the realtor to lead him around the house without resistance.

Harry’d loved the house instantly, just from seeing the tiny pictures in the listing, but the moment they’d stepped inside, he’d _known_ \-- this was _their_ house, there was no question about it. The massive front porch, the warm kitchen tucked in the back of the house, the wide staircase that creaks under foot, the massive yard with the creek and the pond and the enormous shady trees, hundreds of years old -- all of it felt like it’d been waiting for them, waiting for them to come home. By the end of the tour he’d nearly made himself frantic thinking about what he’d do if Louis didn’t feel the same way. Possibly chain himself to the front gate and refuse to leave until Louis was eventually forced to move in.

But in the end, Louis had just folded his arms across his chest, and squinted across the grassy front yard, all patches of gold sunlight and cool shade, and said “Well, I suppose we’ll have to take it, won’t we?”

It’d probably been too big for them, at first, just the two of them in the big house, but it never _felt_ like it -- it had felt full right from the start, and especially so when Louis’ mum visited with the girls, or the rest of the lads came to stay for weeks at a time.

And then there was Rosie, and it’s not as if the house had been empty before her, but from the first day she’d come home, the air had shifted, made room for her in a way Harry hadn’t known was possible, rounding out the corners of everything with something soft and golden.

So the house is big and airy and full of everything that makes Harry think of home and happiness and that particular soft look in Louis’ eyes that still makes his stomach twist happily, but it’s also full of _stuff_ , stuff that is usually exactly where Harry’s trying to walk at seven in the morning before he’s properly awake. And he knows he shouldn’t be surprised by the sheer volume of _things_ a five year old can accumulate, knows he ought to be used to it by now because he’s been falling over a parade of toys and miniature clothing for more than half a decade now, but it seems like every day something new for him to trip over appears as if by witchcraft somewhere in the house.

Today, it’s a roller skate halfway down the hall between their bedroom and Rosie’s.

“Ow,” he mumbles, rubbing the elbow that he’d jarred against the wall as he’d flailed around in an attempt to stay upright. He shakes his head, trying to focus on the task at hand -- he’s meant to be on his way to see if Rosie’s awake yet. Louis hadn’t been in bed when he’d woken up, so he thinks she probably is. The two of them are almost always up before him, doing things that are probably best left unknown, given that the two of them unsupervised together can sometimes be a bit dangerous.

“Bug, you’ve got to pick your things up better,” he calls ahead to the door, slightly ajar. “‘m gonna break a bone eventually.” When he peeks his head into her bedroom, though, she’s not there. Her bed is rumpled, thin white sheets tangled up with the baby blanket she still sleeps with (white with soft yellow ducks on it, the one she’d been wrapped up in the first day she’d come home, and Harry forces himself not to think about it too much because he’d rather not get weepy this early in the day) at the foot of her small single bed. There are several diagrams and charts taped up on the wallpaper, lists of snakes native to the area and different types of moths and bugs and how to tell them all apart. Harry has no idea where her fascination with anything reptilian or arthropodan comes from. Certainly not him -- she’d been the one to teach him the word _arthropod_ in the first place, if he’s being honest. He’s offered to buy her a nice fuzzy cat a dozen times now, but she dismisses cats as “boring” every time he tries.

He maintains hope, however, that someday they will have a proper pet, a sort with actual fur and no pincers or scales at all. One that you can actually cuddle. That’s his hope, at least.

Beside her overflowing bookcase, the French doors that lead out to her small balcony are propped open, letting in a sweet-smelling breeze, already warm and a bit humid.

“Bu- _uuuuug_ ,” he says again, this time in a sing-song voice, and he can hear a rustling from the porch.

“We’re out here,” Louis calls from just outside the open doors.

When Harry pokes his head through the open door, Louis’ sitting at the little cafe table they’d put out there, legs propped up on another one of the chairs so they make a sort of human bridge. Rosie’s sat smack in the middle, facing away from him as he braids her hair messily, her short legs dangling on either side of his locked knees. It looks massively uncomfortable, but Louis doesn’t seem bothered.

“Hi Daddy,” she says, not looking up from whatever she’s got in her hand. Harry peers at it curiously as he walks over, and realizes it’s a miniature Rubik’s cube. He shakes his head, because _honestly_? It’s only got four squares on each side instead of nine, and she’s only twisting it aimlessly, not actually trying to solve it, but still. The idea of having a daughter who’s old enough to own a Rubik’s cube in the first place makes his chest seize up.

“Morning, pal,” he says, interrupting Louis’ plait to plant a kiss on the crown of her hair. “Why’re you letting Papa do that? He’s rubbish at it.”

Rosie looks up at him briefly and shrugs before turning the attention back to the block in her hands. Harry knows, even if she won’t say it, that it’s because it makes Louis happy -- she always picks all the braids out immediately after he’s finished, but still tolerates it while he’s in the middle of doing it all the same.

“Good morning to you too, Haz, and such a lovely greeting,” Louis says. His voice is still a bit scratchy from sleep, so the two of them can’t have been up long, although Louis has a mug of tea on the table, so at least long enough to put the kettle on. “Always a treat to have my plaiting abilities impugned upon before the sun’s even properly up.” He smiles as he’s complaining, and cranes his face up toward Harry, still standing over him, until Harry leans down indulgently to kiss him on the corner of the mouth.

“Can’t help it if it’s the truth,” Harry says, and pulls a third chair across the porch so it’s right up next to Louis’. “Also, can I have your tea?”

“Go get your own.”

Harry groans. “But it’s all the way _downstairs_ ,” he complains, letting his head loll back pitifully to demonstrate how unacceptable that is --- he’d have to go back through Rosie’s room, back down the hall filled with roller skate booby traps and who knows what else, _all_ the way down the stairs, through _another_ hall, into the kitchen at the back of the house, and then all the way back again when he’s done. It’s out of the question, in his opinion.

“Life is hard,” Louis sing-songs, focused intently on the plait he’s currently ruining. “So very, very hard for Harry Styles.”

“It is,” Harry pouts, and reaches over to steal Louis tea. Louis rolls his eyes, but doesn’t try to stop him, and they settle into a comfortable silence, the only sound around them the insects that are starting to buzz as the sun warms the air.

“It’s going to rain,” Rosie informs them after a while. Harry cranes his neck to look up at the sky, which is at present mostly empty, only a few fluffy clouds off in the distance.

“How d’you know?” Louis asks. “Clear as anything now.”

“I dunno,” Rosie says. “It like, um.” She pauses, distracted, to frown at the unsolved Rubik’s cube, giving it one last fierce twist as her tongue pokes between her bottom teeth and the gap on top, and then sets it decisively on the table, clearly finished with it.

“Why do you think it’ll rain?” Harry prompts her again.

“It smells like it does,” she tells him vaguely. “You know.”

Harry doesn’t, not in particular -- to him it mostly smells like Louis’ tea, and the freshly cut grass of the front yard, and Rosie’s lavender shampoo left over from her bath last night. Still, he trusts her prediction -- she’s usually inexplicably right about this sort of thing. He makes a note to close the windows at the back of the house, since that’s usually where the wind blows in from when it rains. They’re usually left open, but Louis’ll have a fit if any water winds up getting in -- he’s been on a kick lately where he thinks the original wood floorboards are warping, trying to convince Harry they should replace them. Harry is firmly against it, loves the way they’re slightly uneven and a bit discolored with a hundred years of use, generations of people who’ve lived there before them. Louis rolls his eyes whenever Harry says this, but so far he’s at least agreed to put any plans for new flooring on hold, so Harry counts it as a win.

“Do we have time to go for a bike ride before it starts, d’you think?” Louis asks her, letting her hair fall out of his fingers so it rests down the back of her sleep shirt.

“Yep,” she says matter-of-factly. “You still have to make breakfast, though,” she says accusingly to Harry.

“Papa didn’t make you any?” he asks, feigning shock, and Louis’ snorts derisively next to him.

“He said he’d get me cereal, but if I waited for you, you’d make pancakes.”

“He did, did he?” Harry asks, aiming the question at Louis.

“I think he just said it because _he_ wants pancakes,” Rosie says carefully, turning around on Louis’ legs to dart a glance between the two of them to ensure her deduction is appropriately appreciated.

“I think you’re exactly right, Bug,” Harry says, standing up and handing the mug of tea -- half empty now -- back to Louis. “But Papa usually gets what he wants, doesn’t he?” Louis hums in agreement. “C’mon, you can be my sous-chef.” He picks her up from Louis’ lap and her arms wrap immediately around his neck, legs clamping down on either side of his ribcage tightly. “You coming?” he asks Louis as he makes for the door back into the house.

Louis smiles up at them, and he’s got that expression again, that one Harry loves best. “You two go on, I’ll just be a second.”

Harry lets himself look at Louis for a moment, just to see the way his hair is soft and tousled and sticking up in the back, the little sliver of his stomach that’s showing where his shirt has ridden up, the slip of his glasses down the bridge of his nose. “I’ll put another kettle on,” he tells him, and hitches Rosie up on his hip.

“What’s Sue chef?” she asks him as they go, and as he tries to explain, he hears Louis laughing softly behind them, the sound of it following him back into the house.

-

They’re just storing their bicycles in the shed that afternoon when sure enough, just as Rosie’d predicted, the rain starts to fall. Maybe she’ll end up being a crack weather reporter, Harry thinks in passing as he straightens her bike, tipping over on its training wheels.

“Daddy, come _on_ ,” Rosie shouts from outside. She and Louis are halfway across the grassy yard, Louis trying in vain to shield his hair from the rain as she tugs him by the hand towards to the back door. “It’s _wet_ ,” she shrieks, like there’s some other way rain ought to be instead, and the fact that it’s wet is personally offending her somehow.

Harry tugs the door to the shed shut behind him and takes off at an awkward half-run towards them, elbowing Louis out of his way when he reaches them and swooping Rosie into his arms, flopping her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

She shouts again, landing an unexpectedly strong kick to his chest as she flails around trying to get free. “I’m getting _wettttt_ ,” she whines into his back, head flipped upside-down.

“You’re covered in _mudddd_ ,” he whines back at her, tightening his arm around her waist. “You have to take a bath _anywayyyy_.” She’d tried to abandon her bike fifteen minutes into their ride at the sight of a half-empty drainage ditch, where apparently she’d seen a snake the week before, and by the time Louis had fished her out of it and sat her back on her bike, she’d been nearly half covered in muck and slime. Harry can’t imagine why now a little rain is bothering her, but he supposes there are probably a lot of things about her he can’t quite wrap his head around.

“Papa,” Rosie whines helplessly from behind him to Louis, “help.”

“No way, Bug, you’re on your own,” he says, shaking his head while still trying to keep the rain off. “I had to go into all that mud after you, I’m not helping anymore.” The rain starts to fall harder and after a moment he gives up, letting his hand drop. The dried dirt on his shirt is turning back to mud as the rain soaks him, his hair dripping into his eyes, and he shrugs at Harry, _like what can you do?_

“C’mon, you’re filthy,” Harry says to Rosie, rearranging her weight as they start across the yard.

“So’re you now,” Louis points out, looking pointedly at the patch of mud that Rosie’s smearing bodily all over Harry as she struggles in vain to get free.

“So we all match, then,” Harry says. Louis smiles, reaching over to grab Harry’s free hand, damp with rain and muck, and they walk into the house together.

-

Rosie pouts through the first half of her bath, telling Harry that she _wasn’t_ dirty and didn’t _need_ one, but Harry’s heard this song and dance a thousand times before, so it mostly goes in one of his ears and out the other. She only stops whining when Louis appears in the bathroom while Harry’s rinsing her hair out, carrying a stack of papers -- the ones, Harry realizes with dismay, that Louis had helped her print off, that detail all the kinds of reptiles a person can keep as a pet.

“Absolutely not, no,” Harry had said the first time they’d showed him.

“It’s just for research, Haz, calm down,” Louis had said, smirking in a worrisome way. Harry’s not stupid, though -- he knows exactly what kind of things happen to him when Louis and Rosie start “researching” anything. His best hope is that eventually they’ll lose interest in whatever it is and move onto a new topic with which to terrorize him.

That hope may have been in vain this time, he realizes, groaning as Louis -- clean and dressed in sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt now -- folds himself down to sit on the closed lid of the toilet.

“Geckos or skinks?” he asks Rosie, who squirms around so madly at the prospect of having to choose that Harry accidentally rinses shampoo directly into her eyes.

“Hold still,” he says. “And you’re not getting either, so calm down.”

“Sure,” Louis says from behind him, in a way that sounds like he means exactly the opposite.

Harry tries to glare while keeping Rosie from choking to death on bubbles, because she’s still flailing around, splashing like a mad person, getting suds half way up the wall and across most of Harry’s shirt.

“Why do you encourage this?” he asks over his shoulder, trying to infuse it with an appropriate level of betrayal. Really, he and Louis are supposed to be a _team_ \-- he shouldn’t be the only one trying to keep frogs out of their bathtub and poisonous man-eating death snakes out of their house. The worst part is that he knows Louis doesn’t even like lizards and spiders either -- but apparently he likes indulging Rosie more than he likes keeping their home free of strange creatures. Harry wishes he could blame Louis for that, but he can’t -- he knows how hard it is to not want to give her anything she wants. He’s just better at drawing the line when it comes to reptiles, apparently.

Louis just smirks, doesn’t answer, and when Rosie finally recovers from her paroxysm of joy enough to answer, she spits out a mouthful of soapy water and shouts “Skink,” very decisively.

-

Louis only gets halfway through his index of skink facts by the time she’s done with her bath, so Harry dries her off, wraps her in her tiny pink bathrobe, and the three of them cram into her tiny little bed while Louis’ finishes.

He’s on the topic of their sleeping patterns when the first roll of thunder sounds, long and low, rumbling in the distance. Rosie instantly tenses up between them, her little spine going stiff.

“Blue-tongued skinks can sleep approximately twelve hours a day,” Louis continues reading loudly, glancing over at Harry over Rosie’s head, but it’s clear she’s not listening anymore.

They’ve been trying to teach her that thunder isn’t scary, that it might be loud but it won’t hurt her, but she is so far unconvinced. Especially in the summer, thunderstorms are fairly regular here, and Harry hates seeing her so afraid of something so big and so commonplace, something that she can’t get away from no matter how many times she crawls into their bed in the middle of the night.

“They’re diurnal,” Louis says, softer this time. “D’you know what means, Bug?”

She shakes her head, and then yanks her baby blanket over it.

“Hey, Bug, it’s okay,” Harry says, trying to coax the blanket down.

“It means they sleep at night and are awake in the day,” Louis explains to her once Harry gets her head exposed again. “The opposite of nocturnal.”

“Like bats,” Harry continues. “Bats are nocturnal.” She loves bats, and he’s not above using any and all tactics, including talking at great length about creatures he’d rather pretend don’t exist, to distract her from the thunder.

“Owls,” she mumbles, tucking her face into Louis’ arm.

“Right, Little Bug, owls too,” he says. “Skinks like to stay up all day, though, just like you, and then go to sleep at night. D’you want to hear more?”

She doesn’t respond.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Louis says after a moment, tightening his arm around her. Harry nudges in closer so they’re all wedged tightly into the far corner, pulling Rosie up onto his lap so he can get an arm around Louis while she nuzzles into his shoulder.

“It’s just loud noises far away,” Harry says. “It can’t hurt you, and neither can the lightning if you’re inside, so we’re fine. We’re snug as a bug in here, yeah?”

She mumbles something into Louis’ arm that Harry can’t hear, and he frowns at Louis.

“ _‘It’s scary,’_ ” Louis mouths to him.

“Oh,” Harry says. “Well it’s okay to be scared sometimes, Bug, yeah? Just remember you’re safe and sound here with us.”

“Remember when you were scared to start school?” Louis asks her, nudging her with his shoulder a bit. She peeks up and nods.

“But you love it now,” Harry reminds her. “It seemed scary at first but it turned out not to be so bad, and now you love it.”

She really _does_ love school, and sometimes Harry thinks she’d live there if she could. She’d been petrified to start kindergarten, but after the first week she’d been in her element, showing off how much of the alphabet she’d already known and how she wasn’t scared of the worms on the playground when they came out after it rained. They’d gone to her end-of-year conferences a few days ago, and her teacher had such glowing things to say about her -- all words like _fearless_ and _kind_ and _smart_ and _funny_ , all of them things that Harry knows she’s gotten straight from Louis -- Harry’d felt like he could float home, feeling happier than he’d ever thought he might.

“I guess,” she mumbles.

“Did you know Daddy’s scared of heights?” Louis asks.

“Hey,” Harry protests. He’s not _really_. They’re just not his favorite thing.

“And do you remember when he had to get the ladder and go up on the roof to get your football down?” Louis continues.

“It wasn’t supposed to go that high,” Rosie says defensively, looking up from Louis’ side properly now.

“Right,” Louis says. “And then Daddy went and got it for you, even though he doesn’t like being up high, because it’s okay to be scared of things sometimes as long as you don’t let it run your life.”

“Also that was technically _my_ football,” Harry adds.

“What about you?” she asks Louis, seeming to be at least a bit distracted now. Another crack of thunder sounds, and she jumps a little, but carries on staring at Louis, waiting for an answer.

“What about me what?” Louis asks.

“What scares you?” she demands.

Louis pretends to think about it, pressing a finger consideringly against his mouth. “Ponies,” he finally says. “Rainbows. Ice cream, especially if it’s chocolate.”

She laughs a little and headbutts him, right in the bicep. “Liar,” she says.

“I don’t particularly _love_ Bearded Dragons, either, but I’ll read to you about them if you’d like,” he offers.

Another peal of lightning and thunder, this time closer. She tenses up again, just a bit, but Harry can see her try to shake it off, not wanting them to be able to tell. “Okay,” she agrees.

“They’re originally from Australia,” Louis reads from his pile of papers. Rosie shifts, and Harry nudges them in closer, and they eventually both fall asleep to the sound of Louis describing how a Bearded Dragon regulates its internal temperature.

-

He wakes up a short time later. Louis has extricated himself from the bed, somehow, and is pulling on Harry’s hand. Rosie’s completely sacked out, her face smushed sideways into the pillow Louis had been using, her mouth hanging open a bit.

“C’mon, sleepy,” Louis says, pulling again. Harry rubs his eyes but stumbles out of bed, his legs feeling heavy and tired. It must only be early afternoon, but the rain is still coming down, the clouds keeping a heavy curtain of darkness around the house that just makes him want to nap.

He lets Louis guide him down the hall, arms wrapped around his back and resting on his stomach as they navigate around Rosie’s roller skate, still where it’d been this morning.

“Losing you,” Louis says quietly in his ear as they walk.

“Hmm?” Harry asks, turning his head slightly.

“That’s what scares me,” Louis says, his voice still soft, vulnerable and gentle all at once. “Losing her, or you. Anything bad happening to either of you.”

“‘S’not gonna happen,” Harry murmurs sleepily. He knows he can’t guarantee it, because there’s no such thing as a guarantee, but he knows what Louis means too well -- it’s terrifying, sometimes, to love someone as much as he loves Lou, and he loves Rosie. Without them -- well, he can’t even imagine it properly.

“I know,” Louis says. “Just saying.”

Harry pulls one of the hands Louis has resting on his stomach up to his mouth, kissing the flat part of his palm and then biting it gently. He wants the gesture to say _I’m here, right here_. He thinks Louis understands.

Louis shuts their bedroom door gently behind them, still nudging Harry forward to their bed, a big antique brass frame that had come with the house that Harry had refused to get rid of.

“D’you want to have a rest?” Louis asks, shoving Harry down softly. He tries to twist around mid-air as he goes, and mostly succeeds in tangling up his legs around each other.

“Only if you’re resting with me,” he says. Louis is standing above him, looking at him fondly through the gray afternoon light that’s coming in from the tall windows, and Harry makes grabby hands at him. Louis rolls his eyes, smiling, and sticks out a hand, like a sophisticated lady waiting for Harry to greet him by kissing it, but Harry just yanks him down onto the bed, the springs squeaking as Louis collapses on top of him.

“Why do I feel like neither of us is gonna rest?” he asks Harry as he rearranges himself so that he’s kneeling around Harry’s torso. Harry lets himself sprawl backwards, one arm behind his head as he smiles lazily up at Louis. He lets his other hand fall against Louis’ bent knee, his thumb stroking softly at the thin material of his sweatpants.

“Probably you’ve got some latent psychic abilities,” he says, his hand inching higher.

“‘S’that what it is, then?” Louis asks, leaning down to pull the neck of Harry’s shirt away and press a biting kiss at his collarbone. His mouth is hot and sweet, and one of the front windows is open, letting a breeze in that dances coolly on Harry’s damp skin when Louis pulls away, making him shiver.

Louis smart little hands both work underneath the hem of Harry’s shirt, tugging it slowly up over his head. Harry can feel the line of Louis’ cock, starting to harden where it’s pressed just above his hip, and he rolls his own hips up just a bit, almost experimentally. Louis exhales in response, loud enough for Harry to hear it.

“Probably,” Harry agrees. His free hand, the one that’s not behind his head, is starting to pull at the waistband of Louis’ sweats, exposing a thin sliver of golden skin that he presses his thumb into.

“Or maybe I just know your ways ‘cos ‘m used to living with a pervert,” Louis says, a bit breathlessly as he yanks Harry’s shirt all the way off, mussing his hair.

“A pervert that you _love_ ,” Harry corrects. “A pervert that you married by choice, s--so.” He pauses with a little gasp when Louis leans back to start pulling off Harry’s trousers, and somehow he’s missed it happening, but he’s already hard, anxious for Louis to get a hand on him. “So that reflects more on you than me, yeah?” he manages to finish.

“Mm,” Louis agrees, scooting further down Harry’s legs so he can pull his trousers all the way off, leaving Harry naked. “Guess so.” He flings the trousers across the room, and Harry can distantly hear them thump against something, but he can’t be bothered to think about what it is. He feels soft and warm and achey, not quite desperate, just waiting for Louis to touch him, and he thinks he could stay like this forever, just looking at Louis, the two of them tucked away in their house, their _home_ , while a storm carries on outside.

“Love you,” he murmurs down to Louis, who’s pressing his thumbs against Harry’s hips, leaning in close to his dick but not quite touching yet.

“Love you too,” Louis says, and then his hand is around Harry’s cock, and then the wet soft heat of his mouth, and Harry can’t help thrusting up into it. Louis sucks him steadily, his tongue swirling deftly before he pulls off for a moment and says “Now pull my hair, yeah?”

Harry smiles, wrapping his free hand in the back of Louis’ soft hair the way he knows he likes as he leans in again, because who is he to say no to Louis?

-

The storm blows over long before supper time, and by the time the three of them are crowded around the kitchen table -- there’s a proper dining room, but they hardly ever eat there, mostly eating in the kitchen, or more frequently, out on one of the porches -- the sky is clear. Rosie’s been shoving the last few bites of her food around her plate for twenty minutes now, steadfastly refusing to eat it.

“Rosalind, for God’s sake,” Louis says, rolling his eyes. “You liked the first three quarters of it.”

“I don’t want it,” she refuses.

“Good thing it’s not a democracy, then,” he tells her. “Finish it. Dad made us nice turkey burgers. And you didn’t even have lunch.”

She just sighs at him through her nose, seeming fifteen instead of five for a moment, and goes back to pushing the food around her plate in a series of widening circles.

“There’s ice cream,” Harry says casually as he stands up to clear his and Louis’ plates, leaving them beside the wide sink for Louis to take care of later. “But it’s only for people who’ve finished their dinner, obviously.”

She looks at him with guarded interest. “What sort?” Harry bites back a laugh, keeping his back turned, because her accent has suddenly switched, the British lilt much stronger now, and he doesn’t know if she does it consciously or not when she’s trying to get her way, but either way, it usually works, especially on Louis.

Louis must notice as well, because he’s laughing when he responds. “Strawberry for _y’all_ ,” he says, in what he must mean to be an imitation of her normal drawl, “Mint for me.”

She keeps her expression studiously neutral, but as soon as Louis looks away, she stuffs all four bites of turkey burger in her mouth at once, and Louis has to thwack her on the back for a solid minute when she inevitably starts coughing.

As a parenting tool, Harry thinks, bribery is really undervalued.

Once she’s done nearly choking and Harry’s fetched them all ice cream, Louis declares he’s going to eat his on the front porch, and Harry and Rosie follow.

“Get your jar, Bug, I bet there are lightning bugs out you can catch,” he tells her as they go.

She almost drops both her bug jar and her ice cream as she struggles to carry them, but manages to make it to the porch, where Harry sees he’s right. The sun is just beneath the line of trees now, the shadows falling long and blue over the fireflies that are just starting to light up the yard like fairy lights.

“Hold this,” she instructs him, thrusting her half-eaten bowl of ice cream at him, and then barrels down the steps, headfirst into a cloud of glowing yellow bugs. “Don’t it eat!” she shouts backwards.

“She’s terrified of thunder, but I bet you could put her in a swimming pool full of beetles and poisonous snakes and she wouldn’t bat an eye,” Louis says, shaking his head fondly at her. Harry flops down next to him on the porch swing, and they watch her run madly, too impatient to let the fireflies come to her. She manages to get a few into her jar, but they inevitably fly out when she goes for more. The third time this happens she lets out such a frustrated shout that Louis jumps, and Harry dissolves into laughter for a solid minute.

Eventually she climbs back up the steeps of the porch and wiggles in between the two of them on the swing, handing the jar where three fireflies bump lazily against each other inside to Louis. She holds out her hand to Harry, and he gives her back her ice cream, which is entirely melted by now.

“You let it melt,” she says, scowling at him.

“We live in Georgia,” he tells her. “It’s summer. Sort of out of my hands.”

She shrugs and turns her attention back to the bugs that Louis' holding.

“Papa said we could go to the pet store tomorrow,” she says to the fireflies inside the jar. “For lizards.”

“First of all, I _didn’t_ ,” Louis protests. “Second of all, lizards eat insects, so I don’t suppose that lot would be too excited about it even if I had.”

“You’ve got school tomorrow anyway, Bug,” Harry reminds her.

“Oh,” she says. “Right. Oops.” She pulls the jar back from Louis, who shrugs, clearly unsure why he’d had it in the first place.

“It’s the last week of school, though,” Harry continues. “And then it’s summer break. What d’you think we should do then?”

“Lizards,” she says absently. She’s impressively single-minded when she wants to be.

“Lizards are not an activity,” Louis says.

“We’ll go see your grandmothers,” Harry says. She loves going back to England, and he’s been hoping the prospect of going to see his and Louis’ mums will cheer her up when she realizes she won’t be allowed to go back to school for three whole months. “And your uncles are going to come visit soon, yeah?”

She perks up at that. “When?”

“Few weeks,” he says, resting his chin on her shoulder to watch the fireflies fly. They glow sluggishly, lazy inside their glass enclosure. He’ll have to talk her into releasing them before they go in -- they’ve tried to keep them overnight before, and when they’d woken up to a jar full of dead lightning bugs, she’d been inconsolable. “Zayn and Liam are flying in first, and then Niall after that.”

Her head whips around at that. “ _Niall_?” she repeats incredulously.

“Who else did you think he meant when he said ‘your uncles’?” Louis teases.

“Niall’s _not_ allowed,” she insists, her cheeks blushing terribly red in an instant. Harry muffles a laugh in her hair. He hasn’t any idea why she’s developed such a crush on Niall in the last few months, but it’s adorable, and it almost always manifests in her pretending to absolutely _hate_ him. It’s really quite delightful to watch unfold, especially when Niall only encourages it. Last time he’d been here, he’d spent the entire time chasing her around the house trying to kiss her on the cheek, and eventually she’d hid under her bed to get away from him, blushing like her face was on fire the entire time.

He’s asked her loads of times now why she likes Niall best, and she always staunchly denies it, going all defensive in the way only five year olds can. So of course now that they’re on the topic, he asks her again.

“I _don’t_ ,” she insists. “He’s _dumb_. His hair is dumb and his face is dumb.”

“What about Zayn and Liam?” Louis teases. “Don’t you think they're jealous you like Niall so much better?”

“No,” she says, and then, “I _don’t_. And Zayn’s a dork.” She thinks about it for a moment, and shrugs. “Liam’s just... Liam. But Niall’s not allowed to come to our house,” she repeats.

“Don’t think we can stop him coming even if we tried, Bug,” Louis says, leaning in to kiss her loud and obnoxious on her cheek until she’s trying to squirm away.

“ _Stop it_ , Papa,” she shrieks, wriggling away until she’s off the swing. She snatches her jar and goes back out into the yard, clearly not interested in letting the line of conversation continue.

Harry stands up to follow her, pulling Louis by the hand, and they take turns trying to corral the clouds of glowing bugs towards her jar. The success is mixed, but by the time she’s releasing them all into the air again (with only a little cajoling from Harry), there are almost a dozen in it at once.

She starts to tire out just as the last light of sunset slips away, her jar dangling empty in her hand as she half-heartedly points it at a few of the lingering bugs.

“Time to call it a night, Bug, yeah?” Louis tells her, sweeping her up into his arms. “Let the real bugs get some rest.”

She laughs tiredly, kicking her legs out a few lazy times. “Bugs,” she says. “Bugs and Bug.” She points to herself.

“Exactly right,” Harry tells her. “D’you know why we call you that?”

She shrugs in Louis’ arms. “I like bugs?” she answers sleepily.

“Nope,” Harry teases, poking his fingers into her ribs so she squirms. “Because you’re our little lightning bug, and you light up our _liiiiife_.” He drags the last word out obnoxiously, and Louis groans beside him. It’s not actually true -- Lou had just started calling her that one day when she’d been little for no particular reason and it had fit well enough to stick, but Harry likes his version anyway, even if it’s not technically accurate.

“That’s dumb,” she tells him from Louis’ arms, a yawn punctuating it big enough to practically unhinge her jaw. “And embarrassing.”

“Good,” Harry tells her. “‘S’our jobs to embarrass you.”

She makes a noise in response, but it doesn't sound like actual words, and by the time they’re back inside and at the foot of the stairs, she’s fast asleep, head resting on Louis’ shoulder.

“You really _are_ horribly embarrassing,” Louis tells him as they climb the stairs together, heading for Rosie’s room.

“Yep,” he agrees. “Probably only gonna get worse the older she gets, too.”

“I shudder to imagine,” Louis says with a smile as he sets Rosie’s down softly in her bed. She rolls around a few times, but doesn’t wake, and they slip out of the room quietly, Louis’ hand warm and solid in the small of Harry’s back as they go.


End file.
